Fox News, Fox Business and NBC said Monday they will stop airing a campaign ad for President Trump that was widely condemned as racist after NBC ran it during an NFL “Sunday Night Football” game.
“Upon further review, Fox News pulled the ad yesterday and it will not appear on either Fox News Channel or Fox Business Network,” said the broadcaster’s ad sales president, Marianne Gambelli, in a statement to reporters issued shortly after NBC made a similar announcement.
Fox News is a unit of 21st Century Fox FOX, +0.74% FOXA, +0.58% , which shares common ownership with MarketWatch parent News Corp NWS, -0.34% NWSA, -0.46% .
“After further review we recognize the insensitive nature of the ad and have decided to cease airing it across our properties as soon as possible,” an NBC CMCSA, +0.90% rep said in a statement to CNN.
“Sunday Night Football” — already a ratings hit — likely drew a stronger than usual audience as it featured the much-anticipated showdown between the Green Bay Packers and New England Patriots and their star quarterbacks, Aaron Rodgers and Tom Brady.
CNN T, +0.44% had earlier declined to run the ad, deeming it racist.
The ad was part of Team Trump’s campaign to demonize immigrants as the pivotal midterms approach to fire up the president’s “America First,” nativist base.
See: Trump tweet draws Willie Horton comparison from top Republican in Florida
Trump, asked Monday about the ad, said that he didn’t “know about it” but that it seemed to be effective, and “a lot of things are offensive”:
Well played. Well spoken. Beautifully reasoned. https://t.co/qPVY4Mlwgi
— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) November 5, 2018
The ad paints a doomsday scenario in which an “invasion” of a few thousand Central America asylum seekers — many of them women and children traveling in a series of caravans — supposedly poses a dire threat to American democracy.
Featuring Luis Bracamontes, an illegal immigrant convicted of murdering two sheriff’s deputies in 2014, the ad falsely claims that Democrats “let him into our country.”
In fact, he was deported and last sneaked in when George W. Bush was president, and he was detained but released by former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, a Trump favorite who later won a presidential pardon.
After it aired, people flocked to Twitter to condemn the network for taking money to air the ad.
“So @nbc and @Comcast aired that racist Trump caravan commercial during the football game. Who made that decision? How did they decide it was ok? I am disgusted that you would air that after @cnn refused to air it because it is explicitly racist. Shame on you. @NBCNews,” filmmaker and comic Judd Apatow wrote in a typical post.
This report previously appeared at NYPost.com.
